Meat-Extract Case Study for Transnationalism: Overview

Jan Rüger’s article from 2010 applies the history of OXO meat extract as an example of transnational history. It acts as a brief introduction to wider discussion of cases of national engagement, stressing that transnationalism has both strengths and weaknesses. Thus this work concerns exactly what the title suggests: “Challenges to Transnational History”.
Meat extract produced from the end of the nineteenth century by the company LEMCO demonstrates the now standard manufacturing process of respectively producing, packaging and selling the same product in different countries. Invented in Germany, it was produced in Uruguay by a London-based company [p.658]. As tensions increased across Europe in the lead-up to the First World War European nations increasingly became closed to one-another, and Britain gradually came to monopolize the production of OXO, although it originally had strong Anglo-German connections. By the time of the war it had become a British national symbol. OXO meat extract thus hints at a pre-war history that has more transnational links than was experienced for a long period in the twentieth century. Consequently, the article demonstrates that, though surprising, meat extract is both an interesting and appropriate example of transnational history. However, Rüger calls the history of the OXO cube a “suitable (if minor) case-study of the benefits and challenges of transnational history.” [p. 657]. Later on, he argues that “as whimsical as it is…” OXO meat extract perfectly illustrates the point that a previously transnational Europe was divided into increasingly self-contained nations as a result of the war [p. 662]. One might ask why Rüger feels the need to downplay its significance as a case study? Although meat extract might not be the most large-scale example of transnational links in pre-war Europe, this does not diminish its consequence. The study highlights how solely national perspectives on history might be too simplistic. However, Rüger attentively argues that transnational history should compliment, rather than completely replace, national history. In fact, “the case of OXO suggests that national and transnational narratives can be brought together fruitfully in a way that cuts across disciplines” [p. 662]. Rather than expressly working against the established notion that the nation has to be the focal point for historical study, Rüger concludes effectively that one of the main challenges of transnational history “is not to overcome ‘the nation’ as the main frame of reference, but to show how it is bound up with the global/transnational/cross-national past” [p. 663].

See Jan Rüger ‘OXO: Or, the Challenges of Transnational History’, European History Quarterly 40, no.4 (October 1, 2010): pp.656-68.